“Orders going out by signal lamp now, Sir.”
“Very good.” Knudson waited for the ‘message received and understood’ acknowledgments then gave the order he’d been waiting all his professional life to give. “To all ships. Battle stations.”
CHAPTER FOUR: FIRST SNOWFALL
He was hunting reconnaissance aircraft again. This time his prey was a very different type of scout bird with a different mission. The Me-264 he’d taken part in killing earlier had been a maritime patrol aircraft out searching the Atlantic for whatever was out there. Now, he was hunting scout planes from a carrier; launched to find his floating airbase for a follow-up strike. He and the other Bearcat pilots were being steered in by radio from the scouts of Task Force 58 to the north. A professional courtesy, really. Given the number of fighters TF58 had available, a few scout planes were hardly anything for them to worry about. For Hunter-Killer Group Sitka, with a total air group of 32 Bearcats and 22 Avengers split between the two CVEs, even a small strike was a significant threat. More than half those Bearcats were up now, trying to bring down the German scouts.
One scout was below Eleanor. A Ju-87 cruised below the clouds, looking for an enemy task group. It was a reasonable certainty that it was hunting bigger game than a pair of CVEs and a handful of destroyers but that wouldn’t matter too much. Even experienced naval pilots had a hard time telling the difference between one class of a ship and another. There were too many stories of cases of mistaken identity, some amusing, others tragic. The German pilots were skilled and well-trained, but they weren’t naval pilots. To them, one aircraft carrier would look much like another and there would be precious little difference between a destroyer and a battleship. The little jeep carriers and their destroyers would look like much bigger game. So, the Ju-87s had to go.
Pace took his Bearcat down in a long sweeping dive. The Ju-87 crew was scanning the sea below for the tell-tale wakes of the formation. They never saw the threat coming from above until it was almost too late. The rear gunner woke up to the two fighters closing in on him and grabbed his twin machine guns in a hurry. The first streams of tracer went wild, more of a threat to the gunner’s own aircraft than anything else. The second burst was much better aimed. It licked around the two diving Bearcats; tracers passed beside and between them. Pace aligned his pipper carefully, just ahead of the German aircraft’s nose, and squeezed off a burst. To his frustration, just as he fired, the Ju-87 slid to one side and appeared to drop out of the air. It was still as a dive bomber; diving was something it did well. Pace’s burst of fire went wild. A split second later, his wingman laced the air with his .50 calibers as well, equally unsuccessfully. That left only one option.
The Bearcats followed the Ju-87 down. It pulled away from them in the wild dive but no matter how skilled the pilot, there was an absolute limit to how long an aircraft could dive. The German pilot left his pull-out as late as he dared and his plane skimmed the sea surface when he was in level flight. That was the idea of course, to get as low as possible so that the American fighters couldn’t get at him from below and behind. Pace was less reckless about how late he left his pull-out. Since he was going to be coming in from above again, there was no point in cutting things fine. Once again, he lined the pipper in his gunsight ahead of the Ju-87s nose. It was different now, the German aircraft was wallowing in the aftermath of its dive. His tracers stitched into the target’s nose and then Pace walked them along the fuselage, first shattering the glasshouse cockpit, then marching back towards the tail. The Ju-87 didn’t have far to go, the sea was only a few feet below.
The ditching was good. The fixed undercarriage broke off on impact and the plane came to a halt bobbing on the waves. Pace and his wingman swept past then arched up and away, coming around for a strafing pass. They held their fire, there was no sign of movement from the settling aircraft. Before they overflew it, the aircraft rolled to port, one crooked wing lifting in a last gesture of defiance before the Ju-87 sank.
“Sitka-One. This is Eagle-Three. Bandit is splashed. Say again, bandit is splashed.”
“Acknowledged Eagle-Three. Return immediately to rearm and refuel.” Pace’s eyebrows went up at the message. Hunter-Killer Group Sitka was transmitting. That meant lights-on had been given and the group was radiating. Radar, radio, whatever was needed. Including the homing beacons which was a relief. However, lights-on meant the group had been spotted. That was very definitely not a relief. Stalingrad, aka Sitka-One, was calling her fighters home to face an expected attack. That was more than a lack of a relief; that was downright disturbing.
“Sir, we’ve lost contact with six of the scout aircraft. The ones covering the arc 240 to 312 degrees.”
“That gives us a rough fix. They didn’t spot anything I assume?” Admiral Ernst Brinkmann didn’t have much hope of that. All too often, the rough fix given by their destruction was the only information a recon aircraft gained. That’s why it was called a flaming datum.
“Sir, Metox reports enemy radar transmissions. Airborne radars; a lot of them. Same frequency as their search radar, the one the U-boatmen hate.”
Brinkmann winced inside. That was news he didn’t want to hear. Back in ’43, the snorkel had been the great hope of the submarine fleet. It would allow the U-boats to run submerged all the time and avoid the air patrols that had decimated them. Then, the Americans had brought in a new radar; one that could pick up a snorkel head at ranges of dozens of kilometers. Of course, that meant it could pick up larger targets at much longer ranges. There had been whispers that American scout planes had the same radar so they wouldn’t have to close with an enemy formation and die the way the German scout aircraft were dying.
Brinkmann damned the Americans. Ever since they had entered the war, things had changed. They had an avalanche of materiaclass="underline" tanks, guns, planes, ships. Everything needed to fight in such profusion it didn’t matter how much was destroyed. A division of tanks gone? Call up Detroit and double production for next month. Need a radar for every scout aircraft? No problem, call the factory and tell them to get moving. There isn’t a factory? No problem, build another one. Brinkmann had heard that Eastern Siberia was being filled with American-built factories; whole towns and cities created out of the open steppes, peopled by the refugees from the west. It was so unfair. We went to war with Russia knowing that Russian industrial might was in the west. Destroy or capture it and the war would be over. How were we to know that the Russians would move it? Or that the Americans would replace what had been lost ten times over.